Our Fitness Blog

New Year New You: Control What You Can Control

It's that time year and the New Year's resolutions are about to begin. So many of these New Year's resolutions will be built around health, fitness and body composition change. As we see so often, individuals start the New Year on fire. They seem super-motivated and they have laser-like focus. Their workouts are getting done and they are much more consistent. They are extremely mindful and much more cognizant about their nutrition. It seems as if everything is firing on all cylinders. It looks like nothing can stop these individuals from achieving their goals. But then, almost as if it came out of nowhere, the momentum comes to a fast halt. Why does this happen?

Well, there are many reasons why this happens. Sometimes the first few weeks of the New Year and even the first few months seem to be going quite well for these individuals. As fast as they start, they also seem to be "fast burners." Much of this fast burn or burn out is due to the individual not setting himself or herself up for success. This may sound odd, but let's look into this. It would seem that if an individual is focused on their workouts and focused on their nutrition, that this is truly setting them up for success. That is not always the case and here's why.

When it comes to health, fitness and body composition goals, what is "the goal", 99.99% of the time? If you answered, weight loss, you are correct. And, to dive into this even further, majority of the time, there is a timeframe linked to the weight loss. For example, "I have to get this 20-25 pounds off this month." Again, on the surface, this may seem like a good goal and one that is setting the individual up for success. Unfortunately, it is not. These all-too-common goals are doing just the opposite. It is goals like this that are setting the individual up for a lack of success.

Having the goal and setting the goal big is important, as that goes without saying. It is the focus of the weight loss and the timeframe attached to it that derails the individual, why? The reason is because the individual cannot control that. They cannot control how much weight they are going to lose and how quickly they are going to lose it. Point being, the individual is going all-in and full-focus on something they don't have any control over, make sense? The goal is fine, but the focus is off. Having a goal of body fat loss and body weight loss is ideal, but the focus must be different from the goal.

Putting focus towards the aspects we cannot control (weight loss and how quickly it occurs) is being results-focused and that will derail us every time. So, where should our focus be? We want to put all of our focus towards the things that we can control and at the same time, we do not want to give any energy, focus or attention to those things we cannot control. So let's go through a short list of how we are going to achieve our body composition goals. Let's keep the list short; proper sleep each night, working out smart and eating right. Look at these three items carefully. Focusing on these is focusing on the process and that's exactly what will lead to success. We want to be process-focused and not results-focused. When we only focus on the results, we lose sight of the process and we put our attention towards those things that we cannot control.

Let's get back to basics and let's control what we can control. We can control the amount of sleep that we get (sure, there will be times when "life happens" and there may be an urgency/emergency and our sleep may be disrupted for a short time). We can control our workout frequency and intensity and we can workout smart. We can control each meal and snack. We cannot control is how much weight we are going to lose and how quickly it is going to happen. We have virtually zero control over that but we have 100% control over our sleep, workouts and nutrition.

In summary, no matter what your body composition, weight loss, health, fitness and/or sport-specific goals are, let's focus on the process and not the results. Always remember, the results are simply the byproduct of a great process. I encourage you to set your goals big, go for it. You don't need to know how you are going to achieve your goals, so, just go for it; set them big. But from here is where we want to start making some big changes.

Normally, when the big goals are set, we keep our eye on that and we continue to look for results. Not this year-this is a new year, new you. You are ready to achieve meaningful and sustainable results for a lifetime. Therefore, you're going to take your eye off of the results and you are going to have laser-like focus on the process. Focus on the process and in time, results will follow. Make this year like no other and control what you can control.